


Next Time I Fall

by Lyricality



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Sticky Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-29
Updated: 2013-09-01
Packaged: 2017-12-24 23:44:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/946099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyricality/pseuds/Lyricality
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love is a miracle, no matter how late.  Or: beginning a relationship is difficult enough without the extra obstacles of gossiping crewmembers, irresolvable amnesia, and psychological baggage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Waiting for the Miracle

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted this fic so badly that I finally stopped pining and wrote it...and kept writing it, and still continue to write it, so I have no idea how long this might eventually turn out. I wanted something about a mature, consensual relationship--love later in life and made unexpected, even unnerving as a result--and this is what I poured out onto the page. I hope it doesn't disappoint.

# Part I: Waiting for the Miracle

Half the working cycle still stretched ahead of him, and Rung was already weary—frayed like the end of a wire. Perhaps he really should have taken more time before resuming his old appointment schedule. He had spent both this morning's sessions with Whirl, as well, and that particular contest of endurance always left him ragged even under the best of circumstances.

His current circumstances were not, precisely, the best. Returning to his usual levels of activity had seemed like embracing familiarity; admitting his mistake at this point felt like failure.

Besides, he hated to elicit that smug flare in Ratchet's optics that so clearly, without a word, said _I told you so._ He had a break before his afternoon sessions, and he planned to make good use of it before Trailcutter arrived. Fortunately, his office offered a few niceties, including a small-scale dispenser. Rung had drawn out a ration and just settled down to drinking it when there arose quite a clatter—out in the corridor, from the muffled sound. He jerked to his feet and keyed open the door, but recent events had taught him a little something about sticking his neck out—literally—without first fully understanding the situation. When no obvious dangers materialized, he dared to peer around the doorway.

This disturbance, at least, had a familiar source. At the nearest juncture between one corridor and another stood Skids, swearing creatively, with his grappling hook snarled around...something. Something that beeped a high-pitched wail of distress.

Rung stepped out into the hall. “Is that a cleaning drone?”

With a grunt of either annoyance or affirmation, Skids glanced over at him, and managed to tangle himself even more thoroughly thanks to his lapse of attention. “Afraid so,” he said and huffed a sigh through his vents. Something like relief eased the angles of his face, nevertheless. “Hello there. Help?”

“I think you've been warned about this.” Rung tried for severity, but he couldn't suppress his smile.

“What can I say. Bad memory for all that,” Skids said. The left corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk. He kept still as Rung approached, and he even managed not to fidget while Rung examined the muddle of mech and grappling wire and drone. The drone kept beeping, perhaps a little less frantically. Rung hoped that Ultra Magnus wouldn't come bearing down on them at any moment. He probably monitored small details like drone statuses.

Snaking a hand between the base of the hook and the drone itself, Rung wrapped his fingers around one coil of the wire and dislodged it from an armor protrusion. Another followed, and then another, before he could disentangle the major knot. The wire had twisted around one of the drone's control antennae, somehow, but with a bit of applied pressure, everything properly unwound. Freed, the drone beeped twice—perhaps in admonition—as Rung lowered it to the floor.

“Go on, then,” he said and gave it a little push. Treads gripping the floor, it rolled back and forth for a moment before taking off down the corridor. It whirled around the connecting corner and disappeared from sight.

Skids busied himself spooling in his grappling hook. At least he had the decency to look moderately ashamed of himself. “Thanks, Eyebrows.”

“Not exactly a dramatic rescue, but I'll take it.”

The hook clicked into place and gears whirred as Skids switched it for his hand. His smile was wry. “Sometimes I see one and I just can't quite...control myself.”

“Like a compulsion?” Rung's eyebrows lifted. At this point in their journey— after the attack of the sparkeater, the disaster of Fortress Maximus's psychological break, and the shock of Red Alert's accident—the majority of the crew had sought Rung out for a single introductory appointment, at the least. Glancing through his internal records, however, Rung discovered that Skids had never done so, and he could only blame the mistake on his own inattention. “We should schedule something,” he offered, more than ready to correct his lapse. “We could talk about it.”

Skids chuckled. “I wouldn't go that far,” he protested. “Just a quirk, I think. Besides, I like tweaking Ultra Magnus's antennae every now and then.”

“We should still talk,” Rung persisted. Skids never seemed to take serious issue with his own amnesia—in fact, he appeared to celebrate it, if any of Swerve's rambling discourse could be trusted—but leaving such gaps unexplored could represent a disturbing pattern of denial. “You've never come to see me,” he said, then realized that statement wasn't precisely true. Skids did stop by his office, fairly frequently, to check on his continuing recovery. “I mean...not in my professional capacity.”

Something in those words made Skids pause, and his optics focused on Rung's. “Can’t say I’d mind talking to you some more,” he said at length, as his lips stretched into a slow smile. “But not in a professional capacity.”

Rung froze. His optics widened behind their protective lenses and his ventilations almost—not quite—skipped.

“I... Oh.”

Smile widening, Skids leaned closer, just a fraction, and rested his palm on the curve of Rung’s shoulder. “Come to Swerve’s, at the end of the cycle,” he said. His expression was mild, but his optics glowed, intent.

That hand was broad and warm. Rung's ventilations did skip, this time, and he wound his fingers into nervous fists before forcibly relaxing them. He shouldn't agree. He should finish his appointments and spend the off-cycle in recharge; he was still officially on “long-term recovery” status.

He shouldn't encourage this.

He nodded, instead, too shy for proper enthusiasm, but Skids smiled in response. That was the smile that Rung remembered from those long, blurry days of semi-consciousness, exactly the same smile, and he felt suddenly hypersensitive to the world—wide awake to a changing reality and conscious of so many potential dangers.

The hand on his shoulder squeezed, lightly, and then it withdrew. “Looking forward to it,” Skids said, with a casual affection that Rung barely understood and badly envied.

“I’ll be there,” Rung managed to reply. He couldn’t decide whether anticipation or apprehension had started the fluttering in his spark.

They stood staring at each other for a moment or two more, until Rung could no longer bear the tension and shifted his weight from foot to foot. He sensed the weight between them shifting, too—undergoing a metamorphosis from one sort of pressure to another. He and Skids were not just acquaintances; they were not only friends. Attraction, acknowledged, upset the balance. Looking up at Skids, Rung could openly appreciate the angular strength of that frame and the pleasant shape of those lips. His admiration was suddenly allowed.

Skids took pity on him. “See you then,” he said, with a wave of one hand. Turning, he walked away down the corridor and stopped in front of the entrance to the lift. The door panel opened with a hiss. Before stepping inside, Skids flashed a grin over one shoulder, and then he was gone.

“Oh. Primus.”

Rung stood motionless in the hallway for several useless seconds before remembering his unfinished energon, and that memory finally prompted him to unlock his knees and return to the relative safety of his office. He sat in his chair and held the glass between both hands. Primus, his joints felt weak. He shuttered his optics and discovered that—like the victim of a high-velocity vehicle crash—he could remember every detail with brutal clarity: the gleam of Skids's optics, the strength of his hand, the warmth of his voice. Rung's own pathetic, startled awkwardness in response.

Reactivating his optics, he forced himself to sip from the glass. He required himself to drain the entire thing, swallow by swallow, before allowing any further self-recriminations. Skids had surprised him. A little social fumbling, as a consequence, hadn't made Skids reconsider his offer. Nothing had really changed.

The high probability that everything _could,_ however, made Rung unspeakably grateful for his own skill in compartmentalizing his emotions. He partitioned all that unease, nervousness and indecision into a box large enough to contain it, and then he sanitized the glass, settled his spark, and concentrated all his professionalism to greet Trailcutter and begin their session.

Work provided the best of all distractions.

Nevertheless, by the time his final appointment wound to an end, Rung had dreamed up a dozen petty reasons to cancel. Too tired this cycle, too busy in general, too circumspect for fraternization, too public a place. Too anxious. He straightened his office to perfection; he wasted several minutes straightening it again. Running low on excuses, he left the office at last and slipped into the nearest set of communal washracks. He checked his reflection in one of the mirrored walls, frowned, and rubbed at a scuff of paint on one audial. No time for even a quick wash, much less a buff or a wax, and oh, he was being ridiculous. Skids had seen him without a _head;_ he was hardly going to care about a little smudged finish.

Rung walked most of the way to Swerve's. He couldn't bear the stale air of the lift for long. At the open doorway of the bar, he stopped to gather himself together and acclimate his sensors to the buzz of conversation and the thrum of the music.

Casual. No expectations. Take everything slow.

Noise washed over him in a wave as he stepped inside and flickered his optics in the low light. The room was crowded, full of mechs just off-shift, but Rung could pick out Skids by the glowing circuitry stripes that outlined his chest plating.

Skids sat at a corner table, facing the door. Swerve was leaning toward him, speaking, and he laughed in response. Opposite him, sharing the same bench, Rewind and Tailgate hunkered over a datapad together.

The picture they made was friendly, companionable. Commonplace.

For a terrible moment, Rung thought that he had completely misunderstood. A stab of unexpected disappointment made him sway in place. Skids had clearly been on watch for him, however, and waved a beckoning hand. Caught between fleeing like a petrorabbit or resigning himself to discomfort, Rung chose the latter, and he pushed himself forward like an automaton, with hopeful uncertainty still frozen on his lips.

Skids stood to greet him; that was new. He wore that smile, again, and Rung felt his own expression smoothing out in response.

Behind Skids, Rewind deactivated his datapad and stood with a stretch. “C'mon, Tailgate. I think Domey's had enough alone time for a cycle. Besides, we catch him in the right mood and he might crack open that canister of Psycho Serum I got him on Hedonia.”

“What mood would _that_ be?” Tailgate retorted, but he stood anyway.

“Had Enough of Brainstorm, probably.” Rewind paused at Rung's side and gave his lower arm a little squeeze. The left half of his visor flickered in a wink. “Hey, Rung. Nice to see you out of your office, again. Maybe you'll come down here a little more often?”

Feeling caught out, Rung ducked his head. “Maybe I will.”

Rewind was no fool, and his visor brightened with wicked delight. Tailgate shared his enthusiasm, if not his subtlety or his understanding, and the minibot flung himself around Rung's opposite side in a clinging—and somewhat clanging—embrace. “Excellent!” Tailgate chirped. “We all need to hang out again! You, me, Rewind, Swerve, Skids, Cyclonus, Chromedome too...oh, and Hound is fun...” He seemed likely to list the rest of the crew one by one, but Rewind grabbed him by the collar faring and pulled him toward the door.

“Yep, all of us again, real soon. C'mon,” Rewind said, and they left with a backwards wave.

Blessed with neither equal comprehension nor similar empathy, Swerve showed no signs of making his own exit. He began a rambling description of some sort of contraband that Drift had found in Atomizer's hab suite, instead, and Rung hadn't the hardness of spark to do anything but nod and vocalize where appropriate. Swerve still punished himself for the injury Rung had suffered. Rung could see the miserable shame in every desperate grin, every forced joke, every attempted conversation. Pity how Swerve never seemed to remember that he had taken part in Rung's recovery, too. Surely the scales between them had balanced again.

After a few minutes, fortunately or not, a rush of orders summoned Swerve back behind the bar. His absence magnified Rung's awareness of Skids, so close but so peculiarly distant, and trepidation threatened to overwhelm what remained of Rung's self-assurance.

“Sit with me?” Skids spoke softly despite the volume of the room.

Rung nodded.

They sat across from each other, rather than side by side as they usually did when the whole group gathered around a table. Rung laid his hands flat against the tabletop, then pressed his fingertips together, then wound his fingers together in his lap. Helpless and uncertain, he stared into Skids’s face and tried not to linger too long on the curve of his mouth. The air between them felt charged—electric with potential.

“Sorry,” Skids said after an uncomfortable silence. “Guess I only made things awkward.”

Rung shook his head. “No. I mean...” He supposed that he shouldn’t lie. “I mean yes, it’s awkward, but no, I don’t particularly...mind.”

Skids allowed himself a smile, and his shoulders relaxed with a deep ventilation. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“If you like.” Rung rarely drank anything beyond midgrades, but the indulgence seemed appropriate.

Smile turning a little fiendish, Skids said, “I'll mix you something.” He had stood and headed toward the bar before Rung could formulate a polite enough protest. Rung waited, ignoring the stirrings of his own anxiety and trying not to feel abandoned. He refused to be so absurd. The seconds ticked by, marking off one minute, then two. Against his own will, he glanced at the bar to see Skids behind it, a drink in either hand and Swerve at his side. Swerve said something, a question, but Skids only grinned in response.

He headed back toward the table. Rung quashed the unreasonable urge to glance away—pretend he hadn't been staring—and smiled encouragement instead when Skids placed one glass in front of him and settled back into his seat with the other. Rung's drink was an unfamiliar blend of lavender and glittering gold. It was nothing he'd tried or even seen before.

Quizzical, Rung peered into it. “What is it? Exactly?” He hoped Skids would forgive a little wariness.

“Adrenaline Makeover.” Skids slanted him a smile and looked unaccountably pleased with himself. “Swerve's been teaching me, a bit. I think you'll like it.” He chuckled over Rung's—justifiably!—worried expression before drinking from his own glass. “Try it. Cross my spark, I won't poison you. Not even unintentionally.” One optic flickered in a wink.

Guilty over his own doubt, Rung braced himself and lifted the glass. An immediate burn seared his intake, making him shudder, but the shock preceded a crisp sweetness that lingered in the mouth and made him long, unexpectedly, for another taste. Rung sipped again, more slowly, and sighed through all his vents as that sweetness glossed over his interior sensors. “This is good,” he admitted. He paused to sip again. “Very good. Thank you.”

Visibly satisfied, Skids leaned back against the cushioning of the seat and took a long swallow of his own drink. The liquid looked like filtered unium; its depths were stark silver. Rung liked the contrast of so complicated a mech preferring an entirely uncomplicated fuel.

“So...” Rung peered at Skids over the edge of his glass. “Misfire, hm?”

Skids choked and tried to cover it by coughing through his vents. He raised an optic ridge. “Psychiatry,” he retorted. “Psychotherapy. Interchangeable.”

Trying—unsuccessfully—to transform his grin into a scowl, Rung pointed a finger at him. “Not another word.”

“Going to make conversation difficult.” Skids's own grin was wide and unapologetic. “Do you even _have_ a nemesis? Honestly.”

Rung did not, but he had no intention of admitting as much. “I see no reason to limit myself to one,” he said instead, and filled with heady satisfaction when that answer made Skids laugh outright. Beaming, ducking his head to hide it, Rung swirled the contents of his glass with a fingertip. “And do I finally get to hear any stories from you, then? About any of the terrible things that Misfire did to you? Or do I have to live with my own unbearable curiosity?”

“Nah, Swerve got it right.” Skids took a long swallow from his glass and shook his head. “Don't remember, really. There's...something. Something about Misfire.” A frown passed across his face, there and gone again like the shadow of a storm.

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you.”

Smiling again, Skids shrugged. “I think that'd be pretty well impossible. You upsetting me, I mean.”

“Well, I don't intend to try, either.”

“I know that.” Skids extended a hand, palm up, across the table, and then he waited, sipping from his glass.

Rung couldn't restrain himself from a glance around the room, but no one was looking in their direction. He was making himself ridiculous again. Reaching out in return, he laid his hand over Skids's, and they shared an equally hesitant smile as Skids's fingers folded around his own. “I should ask _you_ for stories,” Skids said after a moment of quiet between them. “You've already got the advantage. You know more about my past than most, thanks to Rewind's little interactive storytelling sessions.” His smile turned crafty at the edges. “I don't know the first thing about yours.”

“I'm sorry to disappoint you, but it's all very dull,” Rung admitted. His own memory—perfectly intact, with a particular knack for detail—only confirmed the long vorns as remarkable in nothing but their monotony. “Though we're even on certain scores. I don't remember any of Rewind's gatherings except the very end.”

Optical ridges lifting, Skids shook his head. “That's a pity. Orion Pax was one of the more exciting things that ever happened to me. That I recall,” he amended.

Rung shyly brushed their thumbs together. “Why don't you tell it to me now?”

It was a deflection technique, maybe even a little underhanded, but Rung knew a thousand ways to turn a conversation away from himself. Skids flickered widened optics for a moment before his mouth settled into a knowing curve. Despite the expression, he didn't refuse. “I wasn't there for all of it,” he said. “But I'll do my best. It started with Chromedome, before the beginning of the war, when he was an enforcer...”

Skids was pleasant enough to listen to, once he shed his initial awkwardness over speaking to an audience. Rung had heard any number of events detailed in any number of ways during his lengthy career, and he had gained a connaisseur's appreciation for the qualities of an individual voice. Skids spoke in a smooth, rhythmic baritone that suggested an intimate understanding—learned or natural—of music. When he reached the climax and its aftermath, his frustrated sorrow at Shockwave's fate was entirely sincere. Rung knew plenty about old wounds, as well, and the ways in which they never quite healed.

“Despite the sabotage, the Academy clung on long enough for me to graduate,” Skids finished. “But it was never the same. It fell apart pretty quick. It was Shockwave—his passion, his focus, just _him—_ that united us in the first place. Most 'outliers,' or whatever you want to call us... We seem to be natural loners.” Lips pressing into a narrow line, Skids shrugged.

Rung smiled, but sadly, and tilted his head to meet Skids's optics. “Sometimes it's easier,” he said, “staying alone.”

“True.” Skids pushed his empty glass to the edge of the table as a signal for Swerve to bring him another. “But whatever is easy isn't always what's best.”

“True,” Rung echoed.

Swerve brought another glass for each of them. When Skids moved to pay, Rung shook his head and put this round—and another one—on his account. Swerve ran the charges with a decidedly neutral expression, but behind the lens of his visor, the glow of his optics kept shifting to and lingering on their clasped hands.

“You like to keep us on equal footing, don't you?” Skids said, once the unusually-taciturn Swerve had returned to the bar.

Sipping from his glass, Rung smiled. “I wouldn't want anyone to accuse me of taking improper advantage of an invitation. So yes.”

“Then you won't object to telling me a story of your own, now.”

Neatly caught, Rung rewarded Skids's idle smirk with a scowl, but he surrendered with good grace. “Aren't you clever? Well. I was forged a psychiatrist, and I've not done anything else. But just before the start of the war, I was working within the Zeta Prime administration—offering general consultations, personality analysis, that sort of thing. Thanks to an old acquaintance, I was designated by the Functionist Council to give support to mechs recently upgraded from one frame to another, as well. That was how _I_ met—very briefly—Orion Pax.”

Skids's optics brightened. “Go on.”

Encouraged, Rung continued, spinning a tale that had very little to do with himself and far more to do with Ratchet, Optimus-then-Orion, and the burgeoning Decepticon movement. Far more familiar with listening to events than relating them, he stumbled into detached professionalism a time or two, but Skids's visible interest and occasional questions lent him confidence enough to finish Orion's story. Recounting one upgrade failure reminded him of another, in fact, and he sidestepped into an anecdote about a councillor, dead since the earliest days of the war, who had insisted on transference into a flight mode for which he had great passion but no natural talent. Skids listened to him, leaned forward at the moments of anticipation, and laughed in all the right places. Rung laughed with him, feeling increasingly at ease in a way that had little to do with engex.

“So did he ever get used to the alt?” Skids grinned.

Rung twirled one fingertip around the rim of his empty glass and chuckled. “Never. Although after he took out several of the broadcasting constructs on the Electrum Tower, he did have to downgrade into a basic hover model. As part of the court settlement, I think.”

Laughing again, Skids shook his head. The circuitry strips along his chest glowed with hazy radiance, barely brighter than the lighting of the bar. Rung chose to interpret that gentler shine as an indication of relaxation. He was startled to realize how comfortable he had become, as well. A glance around the bar confirmed that the rest of the patrons had moved past the rowdiest forms of entertainment and settled into idle conversation or solitary contemplation. Most of the remaining crowd consisted of mechs that Rung knew only in passing, and he thought to worry about the lateness of the hour.

Skids smiled for him and refocused his attention. “Tell me another story.”

Rung checked his chronometer with an internal wince. “I should go,” he confessed. His spark surged with a bittersweet mixture of guilt and regret. He felt as if he were stealing something from _himself—_ this bit of time, this rare and precious happiness—but he had already stayed much later than he’d ever intended. Some small, pitiful part of him recoiled from the risk, as well. The longer he stayed, the more likely he was to do something rash.

“Early cycle tomorrow,” Skids said. He drained the last of his engex, his expression hidden behind the glass, but he didn’t sound terribly disappointed. “Didn’t mean to keep you,” he added as he set the glass on the table. The tightening of his fingers against Rung’s punctuated the sly quirk of his smile. “Well, that’s not true.”

Could it really be flattery, Rung wondered, when it sounded so honest? Tentatively, he squeezed back.

Skids’s smile widened. “C’mon.” He stood and drew Rung to his feet by their joined hands. “I’ll walk you home.”

“That’s unexpectedly gentlemanly of you.” The world blurred vaguely at the edges as they left the bar, but Rung wouldn’t have counted himself overcharged—just pleasantly electrified, like a buzzing wire. He couldn’t seem to stop smiling.

With a low and pleasant chuckle, Skids let Rung precede him onto the lift. “Unexpectedly, huh?”

“Just a little.” They settled against the back wall, shoulder to shoulder, and Rung realized that they were still holding hands. That would almost certainly start the gossips twittering, but Rung found that he could let go of his own self-consciousness, at least in regards to a harmless show of affection. People talked. Speculation was a universal constant.

“I think my honor may be under some sort of suspicion. How dare you.” Skids squeezed Rung’s fingers to remove any sting from the words. His dental components flashed in a lopsided grin. “Maybe I ought to remind you that I saved your life, once.”

Rung returned the pressure. “Twice.”

Skids turned his head, regarding Rung more closely, and when their optics met, Skids’s had brightened a bit—more yellow than mellow gold. Embarrassment, Rung thought, and his spark did a little double-skip of glee at the thought of Skids, made _bashful._ “Twice, then,” Skids allowed, and his slow smile warmed Rung from head to foot. “If that’s how you’d like to count.”

“It is,” Rung said, just as the lift eased to a stop.

He stepped out into the hall and led Skids down the left-hand corridor at a leisurely pace. This late into the shift cycle, most mechs had either parked themselves at Swerve’s for the duration or already fallen into recharge, so they met no one else on the brief journey between the lift and the door of Rung’s hab suite. It was a single, like the others on this level: all officer’s quarters. At the launch, he had considered himself lucky to get a solitary space. Only a handful of times since then had the room seemed lonely.

It seemed lonely now. Safe, but empty. Not yet ready to key in the code, Rung spun to face Skids, and the other mech let go of his hand with a lingering brush of their fingers. Rung looked up into Skids’s lean, intent face and the usual inanities cluttered up his mouth and tangled around his glossa.

_I had a nice time._

_Let’s do it again soon._

_Thank you for even caring enough to ask me._

He fought past all of it to say, incongruously, “I would like... I mean, I’d like to hear more about the Academy. What you remember.” For a moment, he felt too small, too spindly, too graceless, as if he could ruin everything with a misplaced word. Skids moved a step closer, and while he wasn’t smiling, the glow of his optics had gentled somewhat, as if he understood. As if he knew what it was to be alone for so long that simple connection, basic attraction, was not just unfamiliar, but almost _new._

“I had a great time,” Skids said. Rung nodded in profound, speechless agreement. “I always do, with you.”

Leaning in, Skids pressed his hands to the wall, bracketing Rung’s shoulders on either side. Rung felt trapped, but not unpleasantly so. Claustrophobia aside, he didn’t mind fitting himself inside this narrow space.

“I’m going to kiss you.” Skids’s tone was so solemn, so much a warning, that Rung smiled.

He grasped for the angled sides of Skids’s helm with both hands and pulled him in. “Do it,” he whispered, into the moment before their lips met.

Their noses bumped, scraping together. Sharing a soft, conspiratorial sort of laugh, they corrected the angle to try again, and Rung shivered with a warmth that started at that point of contact and spread through his frame, loosening his joints. That kiss merged into another, sharper and sweeter, and then a third that lingered long enough to queue up Rung's cooling fans. Hands cupping against Skids's audials, Rung tried to remember the last time anyone had kissed him like this, as if every moment mattered. Skids nudged at his chin with two fingertips, the touch angling them into another kiss. Rung gave the calculation up as equally useless and depressing.

Too long. That was all.

Skids still tasted of engex, that understated burn, and Rung felt intoxicated enough for carelessness. When their kiss broke naturally, Skids tilted his head and dragged parted lips along the cabling of Rung's throat. Ventilations hitching, Rung linked his fingers around the base of Skids's helm to hold him close, and when teeth scraped against the same cabling, his frame pulsed with an ache that started low and hot behind his pelvic plating. “Oh,” he said on a ragged moan.

With a gentle nip, Skids withdrew enough to meet his optics. Rung could feel the heady vibration of aroused systems all along his frame. “Sorry,” Skids said, voice edged by static. He licked his lips. “Too much?”

Rung hummed. The small engine of his alt mode made the same sound in a lower key. After a moment of consideration, he shook his head. “Not yet.”

He had planned to take this slowly, not rush headstrong and heedless into passion. Experience had taught him a great many painful things. He knew that some boundaries, once breached, could never be reconstructed in quite the same ways, and that most roads, once traveled, could not be walked in reverse. But he knew, too, the rarity of shared attraction. Time passed so gradually, cycle by cycle, but four million melancholy years could disappear in the flicker of an optic, with nothing ventured and nothing ever, ever gained.

Of course, worse alternatives lurked around every corner. A flash of light, a starburst of pain, a spark extinguished. He knew, firsthand, how abruptly and unexpectedly one’s time could run out.

He slid his hands down Skids’s chest plates, with his thumbs tracing those circuitry details. He was unforgivably foolish, as always. He couldn't escape that part of himself. “Will you...” Lifting his chin, Rung looked up into Skids’s optics. “Come in?”

Optics flickering once, Skids brought his hands to Rung's shoulders, and his fingers settled gently into the seams above the joints. “Not that I want to question you, exactly—I don't doubt that you know your own mind—but—are you sure?”

Rung eased himself closer, until their chest plates touched with a hiss of metal on metal. “I don't think that waiting will change my wanting this,” he said. “If that's what you mean.”

“Something like that,” Skids said. One hand drifted downward along the side of Rung's chest and finally caught against the outer curve of Rung's hip. His thumb dipped into one of the interior seams, just inside the thigh, and Rung shivered as the connected nodes registered the friction. Skids cupped Rung's audial with his other hand and dipped his head, pressing their forehelms together. His chuckle vibrated through them both. “Trying to decide if I'm sure, too,” he admitted.

Spark pulsing a ragged rhythm against the structures of his chest, Rung nodded. He needed to retreat into professional courtesy to reply. “Take all the time you need.”

“All right.” Skids brushed his lips against the tip of Rung's nose.

Rung nodded automatically, patiently, before realizing that Skids meant that as his answer. “Oh. Yes,” he said, a little abashed over his own enthusiasm, but he still tipped his head upward to press into another kiss. This one was slower, wetter, and his cooling fans fully activated within moments. Skids pressed him to the wall, strumming gently over those interior nodes in his thigh, murmuring something into his mouth. Heat washed through him in waves. He finally pulled himself away to enter his code into the keypad with trembling fingers. “Come in.” The door opened and he drew Skids inside by both hands. “Please, please come in.”


	2. Almost Paradise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Part 2! Now with chapter titles.) Nothing about Rung is ever easy, but he does put out on the first date; pleasantly enough, interfacing is a _learned_ skill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Thank you so much to Lady Oneiros, who helped me figure out where on earth I was going with this, and thank you to those who have commented. ♥)

# Part II: Almost Paradise

The room seemed smaller with someone else inside it. Rung paused to appreciate the difference as the door sealed shut behind them.

“It's not much to look at,” he said. He had a window, and a true berth—padded—rather than just a recharge slab. Everything was sized for a larger mech, but he had long ago adjusted to that recurring theme.

Skids chuckled. “I didn't come for a tour.” He lifted their clasped hands and licked along the backs of Rung's knuckles. Despite his official classification as part of the _Lost Light_ medical team, Rung had none of the frame specifications of Ratchet, First Aid or Ambulon, and his hands offered no particularly exploitable sensitivities to a lover. He jolted at the contact, nevertheless. Releasing him, Skids lifted his head and licked his lips with a contemplative expression, as if categorizing the taste.

Raising that hand, Rung smoothed his palm down the center of Skids's chest. “Come along,” he whispered, an open-ended variation of the same invitation. _Come in, come along, come here._ He backed away toward the berth.

Skids watched from the entry. His lips tipped upward in a tiny smile. “You look a little nervous.”

“I suppose I am.” Rung folded his hands together and took a seat on the edge of the berth. He crossed his legs at the ankle, abruptly realized how defensive that posture would appear, and set his feet flat on the floor. “It’s been...quite a long time.” He would rather not discuss just how long, in fact.

Smile widening, Skids approached him step by measured step. “I can’t remember the last time,” he said, with an air of wry confession. “Hope I remember how it’s done.”

Rung laughed, softly. Their shared uncertainty reassured him. He scooted to one side, making room. “Maybe we can help each other along.”

“A practical demonstration sounds like fun,” Skids said as he settled onto the berth. He left a bit of space between them, but his hand covered Rung’s, and in only a moment, they had entwined their fingers again. Skids’s thumb brushed along Rung’s and found the narrow seam left by Ratchet’s repairs. A sudden shock of memory washed clear of the blur. Rung felt an echo of pressure against his knuckles, heard a voice speaking over the hum of medical equipment.

_Keep fighting. Don’t you give up._

Rung flickered his optics and refocused on Skids’s face. “What’s the matter?” Skids asked, but Rung shook his head and smiled.

“Everything's fine. Kiss me again?”

“I think I still remember how to do that.”

Side by side, the angle wasn’t quite as comfortable, but the heat of each lingering kiss brought Rung’s fans back up to purring eagerness in short order. The circuitry strips lining Skids's chest flickered and then brightened when Rung swung a leg over Skids's hip and settled, delicately, onto his lap. They smiled together. With splayed fingers, Rung slid his hands outward from Skids's central seam, and Skids rocked his hips upward until metal brushed metal. Rung heard himself gasp out a high, haunting vocalization.

“Too fast?” Skids steadied him with a hand at the back of his waist. The other hand drifted along the curve of Rung's chest, ghosted down along one thigh, then returned upwards along the other thigh and flattened over Rung's abdominal plating. “We can play it like this. If you want to stop, we will. If I want to stop...we will.”

Rung draped his arms over Skids's shoulders. He rolled his hips, a casual upward thrust, and Skids's hand slipped lower against his plating. “That's fair,” he murmured. “And no...not too fast.”

“Guess not.” Skids's engine turned over, purring, while his thumb explored the seams of Rung's pelvic paneling. The subtle pressure flickered over Rung's interior nodes like a net of tightening threads. He eased himself closer and tipped his head up, his lips parting in invitation. They kissed with increasing ferocity until the automatic locks of Rung's pelvic array audibly unlatched. Settling back with his weight braced on one arm, Skids watched the steady movement of his fingers against the loosening seams. Then he glanced into Rung's optics and unlatched the manual locks of his own array. Plating hissed apart and folded neatly away. Skids's spike, intricately ridged and gleaming with lubricant, extended inexorably, immediately between them.

Rung reached for it. He glided three fingertips upwards along the underside and nudged, gently, at the cluster of nodes below the head.

Skids hissed through clenched teeth and kept very still, even as his spike jerked against Rung's fingers. Rung couldn't resist teasing him. “Did you want to stop?” he smiled, as his thumb glided over the tip.

“Think I'm good,” Skids said on an explosive exhalation.

His optics unfocused when Rung closed one hand around the length and stroked up to the tip and then down to the base. Rung pressed in with his fingertips, careful concentration in the coordination of his fingers and thumb as he explored the narrow grooves between each delicate segment of plating. Angled pathways of circuitry, familiar shapes from the rest of Skids's frame, lit beneath Rung's touch.

Skids made a low, tortured sound and caught Rung's wrist. “Wait, wait.”

Releasing him instantly, Rung twisted his hand to let their fingers loosely mesh again. “I'm sorry.” Maybe that had been too forward, too invasive.

Skids gave him a laugh laced with static. “Don't you dare. Just...need a second.” He raised their hands to his lips and kissed Rung's palm. Their fingers fully entwined. With his free hand, Skids took hold of his spike. “C'mere,” he asked, with a little tug at their joined hands. Rung pushed closer, rising up on his knees, with a hand on Skids's shoulder for balance and his legs spread wide over Skids's hips. Skids vented hot against the cabling of Rung's neck. “Perfect.” Guiding his spike, he traced the tip along the seams of Rung's pelvic array: up along one side, slowly against the crescent curve at the top; down along the opposite edge.

“Oh,” Rung gasped. He freed his other hand to brace both against Skids's shoulders. His hips curved forward. Everywhere they touched, they shared tiny discharges of electrical friction. The sensation centered behind Rung's pelvic plating and started a surge of conductive lubricant. Helplessly fascinated, he watched the gradual glide of Skids's spike along his seams, until arousal overwhelmed the remnants of manual control and his pelvic plating retracted all at once.

Rung's spike slipped out between them. The shaft brushed against the head of Skids's spike in a lingering caress.

Joints giving way, Rung sank fully down into Skids's lap when Skids took him in hand. Gentle fingers examined the length of his spike and massaged lubricant into the ridges. Rung's spike was of old design: unadorned metal, without the now-standard decoration of bright enamels, but ringed with burnished, conductive copper. Skids tugged him closer—not by the hand—until they nudged against each other with every ventilation. One hand cupping around them both, Skids rubbed them together, and his thumb slicked circles around the tips. Rung thrust up against the friction with a groan. He wound both arms around Skids’s neck, holding tight and pressing his cheek against the flange of Skids’s helm. “What do you like?” Skids asked, as his engine growled with rhythmic vibrations. “What do you want? Let me.”

Rung shivered, touched by the earnest undertones of Skids's voice. He skated a hand over Skids's shoulder and down his arm, then slipped it in between them and wrapped his fingers around the base of Skids's spike. “Inside me,” he whispered. “I like that.”

Skids shuddered so hard that his plating rattled. “I like that, too.”

“Help me.” Rung rubbed them together again, idly, before Skids cupped both hands under Rung's aft and lifted him back onto the berth. Before arranging himself on his back, Rung initiated the minor set of transformations to move that wheel out of the way—recharge on his back proved impossible, otherwise. He sighed out a long ventilation of relief as he settled against the padding, and Skids chuckled from above him.

Skids's hands had never quite left Rung's plating during all that repositioning. Fingers stroked downward, now, along the seams of his thighs, followed by palms smoothing down the blocky constructions of his lower legs. Both hands circled Rung's ankles; both thumbs rubbed briefly against the joints.

With just as much deliberation, both hands glided upward again, over the knee joints and—slowing now—up Rung's inner thighs. Obediently, Rung parted them. Skids's engine eased into a higher gear with an obvious rumble. Skids ducked his head, for one moment of endearing embarrassment, before meeting Rung's optics again. With a similarly diffident smile, Rung covered Skids's hands with his own.

Rung had his own reasons for trepidation: like his spike, his valve was of outdated construction, and the relative simplicity of its design would be immediately obvious to Skids. Solid rim, perfectly circular, unlike the flexible mesh of modern valves. Rung could constrict tightly from the center—tighter yet along the interior—but he could not manipulate the rim. The placement of the nodes differed, as well: uniformly gridded around the circumference, but clustered more heavily at the entrance and at the apex. The outer surface, around the equipment apertures, showed the same orderly node distribution, making the exterior of the array nearly as sensitive as the equipment itself.

“There's something of a steep learning curve,” Rung said, while Skids examined all of it with narrow focus. “I'm sorry to say.”

Skids's smile was wry but genuine. “Funny, that. Learning's one thing I'm really good at.”

Hand sliding inward, he flicked a fingertip along an outermost node, and then he followed the line across, node by node. Rung jerked, gasping, and his legs jittered against the berth in spasmodic twitches. Admittedly, he couldn't have classified the sensation as _unpleasant,_ but it was a sharp and prickling sort of pleasure—an overstimulation of conflicting sensory data.

Skids withdrew his fingers. “Tell me how?”

Still shivering, Rung nodded. He reached for Skids's hand and drew it back to the top of his pelvic array. “Use your palm,” he said. “Just...just pressure, really, around the housings. _Oh.”_ He arched when Skids did exactly as instructed, and a wave of shimmering heat followed the gradual circles of Skids's hand. The exterior nodes functioned better in concert than individually. Grinding against a deeply-seated partner was bliss.

“Hm.” Skids's hand wrapped around the base of Rung's spike and squeezed, following the nodes along the underside with one leisurely stroke to the tip. He trailed back to the base, pressing a thumb to the lowest point of the spike housing, and then moved lower with steady caresses. One fingertip traced the rim of Rung's valve. “You don't have an anterior node,” Skids said.

Rung shook his head. “Earlier construction.” He held himself still, hands trembling, as that fingertip dipped inside and gently probed before returning to circle the rim.

“This is so smooth,” Skids continued, as if noting points for future reference. Two fingers rubbed over the metal at either side of the rim. His other hand stroked down the back of Rung's thigh to the joint. “Bend your knees.” More than willing, Rung obeyed, and then shuttered his optics on a gasp when Skids's head dipped between his thighs and Skid's mouth pressed against the upper curve of his valve rim. Those fingers slipped inside, spreading the mesh and nudging the clustered nodes. “So smooth,” Skids repeated, and then his glossa followed his fingers. Rung moaned as static flickered across his optical feeds. He had forgotten this feeling—the gathering ecstasy of nodes being _licked_ to full charge.

He should have protested; he didn't require so much preparation. He also hadn't the strength of will to object as nimble fingers and a wicked glossa eased him open.

Optics unfocused, visual input blurred, Rung reminded himself to ventilate while that glossa smoothed a slow circle around the interior rim of his valve. It returned to lap at the individual nodes, and Rung dug his fingers into the padding of the berth with a cry. He hadn't expected so thorough an exploration. Each careful lick and stroke amplified the pleasure. In some detached, auxiliary routine of his processor, Rung discovered that he could _feel_ the way Skids learned: a process of trial and error, investigation and observation, nearly too swift to follow and quickening every moment.

_Yes. No. There? No. Yes. Harder. There. Here. Yes.Again.Again.AgainYES..._

Rung found the realization as deeply erotic as the sensation itself. “Skids,” he said, tremulous, and lapsed into a moan when pleasure spiked and flared through the entirety of his array. _“Skids._ Ah—!” He had to clench his hands into fists and grit his teeth to regain any semblance of control. Even then, he could only manage a single word. “Wait.”

That command, however mildly delivered, made Skids lift his head. When he licked his lips, Rung gave out a low, involuntary sound.

“I...just want to look at you.” Rung smiled, still shivering, all abashed admiration. His ventilations steadied; coordination returned. “I mean that I'd like to _be_ looking at you.” He beckoned with one finger.

Skids's expression cleared. “Ah.” 

Considerate of Rung's lesser size, Skids arranged himself with care. He draped Rung's thighs over his own and eased in between Rung's legs. He was far larger than Rung, but not too large for traditional interfacing.

Rung quirked a smile. “I'm not about to break, I promise.”

“I have to be careful with you,” Skids said, as he braced himself on both forearms. “No substitutions. No replacements.” His smile softened at the edges. “You are absolutely one of a kind.”

The light made long, lovely angles of his face, of his frame, and those circuitry strips glowed in the shadows. A sheen of lubricant brightened the line of his lower lip component. Reaching up, Rung touched the tips of his fingers to that glossiness. Skids shuttered his optics and pressed a kiss to Rung's fingertips, to his palm, to the inside of his wrist. For an instant, Rung curled his fingers and closed his hand, as if affection could be caught, held and kept. He never wanted to lose this warmth. Surely the universe would allow him one purely selfish wish.

He clung to it, for just another moment, and then he let it go—that possessiveness, but not the _want._ Desire coiled through him like a knot, drawing inevitably tighter. He wrapped his hand around the back of Skids's neck and pulled him down; their optics met and held. Rung drew in an unsteady ventilation and released it in a whisper. “Please.”

“My pleasure,” Skids said, so softly, and Rung doubted he was imagining the ache in that low voice.

Guiding his spike past the rim of Rung's valve, Skids slipped inside—just the tip, at first, where the heat and pressure stimulated all the entry nodes and made Rung writhe against the berth. The arch of his hips pushed Skids deeper. They gasped together as sensory nodes brushed and flared with charge. One hand clenching against Skids's upper arm, Rung arched again with a croon of mingled welcome and need. Skids replied with a groan like surrender, and he pushed fully inside in one long, gliding thrust. The tip of his spike rubbed against the clustered nodes at the back of Rung's valve.

“There,” Rung said, voice rapt. “Ohh, right there.”

Skids reactivated his optics in narrow slits. His satisfaction vibrated through them both. “A good fit,” he said.

Rung couldn't resist an enigmatic smile. He tightened in a slow squeeze from the shaft of Skids's spike to the tip, and then he lightly rocked his hips.

Skids shouted the worst bit of profanity that Rung had ever heard him utter. Laughing, Rung ran his hands along Skids's braced arms to appreciate the incredible interplay of hydraulics engaging, gears shifting, gyros balancing. So much strength in this frame, and yet it shivered, helpless, above him. Helpless in turn, Rung could only beg for what he needed. “I want you to move, now. Please. _Please.”_

“Anything,” Skids said, although the shallow thrust of his spike was answer enough.

They ventilated together, one quivering sigh, and Rung wrapped his legs as far as he could reach around Skids's hips. His heels pressed into the backs of Skids's thighs as his entire body—outside, inside—clenched in an urgent squeeze. Pushed deeper, Skids rewarded him with a strangled groan, but he finally began to move. He rocked into Rung with slow, testing thrusts, and Rung's ventilations stuttered to a halt at the thought that he was learning again: learning Rung's frame, Rung's valve, and discovering the best combination of angle and pressure and speed. He carried his weight on his forearms, rather than on Rung's chest, and he rolled each thrust upwards at the apex to strike Rung's terminal nodes. The implicit consideration in every movement would have been enough to leave Rung speechless, but the steady, solid pleasure rendered him mindless as well.

Hands lacing at the back of Skids's neck, Rung pulled him down into a kiss. Skids kissed him back, but licked his way free after a few moments, and his glossa followed a slow, swirling path down the cabling of Rung's throat, then lower over Rung's clavicle struts. His lips brushed against the domed plex at the center of Rung’s chest; his glossa stroked over that steadfast glow with every thrust. “Bright spark,” he murmured—not just a description, but an endearment that made Rung tremble and cry out in unexpected emotion. “Brightspark.”

The charge gathered like a rising wave. It washed away Rung's foundations and lapped against the outer coronas of his spark.

Rung unlatched like a cage, and his consciousness flung itself free like something wild and winged. Ecstasy poured out of him along with a complicated shout of completion, a sort of sob of laughter. He hadn't experienced this sort of overload in a long, _long_ time—when the pleasure was so intense that it felt like submerging in liquid joy.

Quivering, euphoric, he folded down tight, as tight as he could, and Skids cried out in turn and spilled spasms of heat against Rung's deepest nodes.

They clung to each other, Rung with his arms flung around Skids's neck, Skids with his teeth biting at Rung's collar faring. Their hips rolled together in lazy rhythm. Panting, still shuddering with aftershocks, Rung smoothed his hand along the side of Skids's helm.

Skids lifted his head. He stared at Rung with a expression equally tender and raw.

Startled by the vulnerability, Rung made a soothing sound and drew him into another kiss. This one reminded Rung of their first one—slow and deep and sweet. He ran one foot up and down the plating of Skids's thigh as another point of contact, another caress.

Skids was still carrying the majority of his own weight on his forearms, and when the kiss broke naturally, he eased himself out and off of Rung. He lay to one side, and Rung turned to face him. Bringing one of Skids's hands to his lips, Rung kissed the base of the thumb and the seam of the palm before meeting his optics again. They shared a solemn, weighted silence until Rung smiled. Skids interlocked their fingers.

“I don't know what to say.” Skids quirked his lips and ventilated a sigh. “Thank you.” He winced. “No, that's awful.”

“It's not,” Rung said. He touched his fingers to Skids's lips. “Thank you. Thank you for sharing that with me.” Beyond the intimacy of the physical act, Skids had shared _himself,_ and Rung appreciated that all the more from a mech who regularly hid his emotional state behind a camouflage of good humor. The way Skids had touched him, and the way he had looked afterwards—stripped bare—those hints spoke to a longer and deeper attachment than Rung had ever imagined. How long, how deep, he didn't dare to guess. Rung only knew that he hadn't felt so connected to someone in more years than he cared to count, and the realization settled over his spark with uneasy weight.

“It was... I couldn't describe it. Unreal.”

Rung swallowed. “It was genuine.”

Smiling, Skids rolled fully onto his back with an adjustment of his paneling. He pulled Rung by the hand. “Come here?” he said.

Rung draped himself along Skids's frame and nestled into the gap below his shoulder joint. Skids's arms wrapped around him. A hand landed against his hip to stroke gradual circles against the plating, and Rung couldn't suppress a wordless murmur of appreciation. He hid his face against the outward curve of Skids's chest plating with a sigh. But for the buzz of their ventilation systems, the room was silent, and Skids was pleasantly warm beneath Rung's frame.

Perhaps a minute or perhaps an hour later, the hand against Rung's hip slowed. Skids spoke softly. “Shall I go? Or would you rather I stayed?”

Despite systems halfway toward shutdown, Rung spent an instant in hesitation. Then he gave his answer, right or wrong. “Stay.”

This time, Skids didn't ask him if he was sure. He pulled Rung closer, instead, and settled into the berth with a purr of internal gears. The tension fled his frame, and it didn't return, even when Rung whispered the command to douse the light.


End file.
